The “Social Network” Trap

Facebook (allied to Microsoft) and Myspace (owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp) are fake-outs on unsuspecting users, mostly children, teens, and young adults. The raison d’etre of these two “consumer” traps is to gather marketing data and shove advertising even farther into users’ lives. This website has long reported on this fact, and will continue to do so, as these cynically planned, BBM-sponsored, wildly popular, narcissism-promoting social control operations expand.

Here was Bob Garfield, who, in the December 1, 2008 issue of Advertising Age, observed this little tidbit for his audience of corporate planners: